It long has been the practice to separate various areas of a lawn, garden or other landscaping areas by means of gravel, rocks, bricks or other suitable means arranged to form a boundary between the particular landscaping area and adjacent areas. The lawn often is separated by a flower bed or garden by a brick coping or curb, or the space adjacent the base of a tree often is separated from the lawn in the same general manner. As frequently happens, plant life such as grass or the like roots through or between the coping and into the area which is desired to be separated from the lawn. Consequently, a bed divider is provided to prevent such grass rooting and spreading.
Bed divider structures presently available usually include an enlarged upper portion such as of a tubular configuration and a flange portion extending lengthwise along the upper portion and depending downwardly therefrom for insertion in the ground, whereby the upper portion is located above the top surface of the ground and the flange portion forms a barrier between adjacent landscaping areas. Often, means such as outwardly projecting lips are provided on the flange portion to facilitate securing the flange portion in the ground. An example of such a landscaping bed divider structure is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,281,473, dated Aug. 4, 1981, and of which I am a co-inventor. The landscaping bed divider structure of that patent also includes a unique means, in the form of corrugations, provided on the flange portion for reinforcing the same in a vertical direction to facilitate inserting and maintaining the bed divider in the ground. Water irrigation delivery systems include similar structures with the upper tubular portions having apertures or soaker holes for irrigating the adjacent ground.
Bed divider structures of the character described above are provided in elongated sections, such as in ten-foot or twenty-foot lengths. The sections usually are extruded of plastic material. With the above general description of such structures, it can be understood that the bed divider sections are generally rigid in their structural "planes" but are fairly flexible transverse to their planes so that the divider sections can be bent around landscaping area contours, such as a circular area about the base of a tree. The term "plane" of the divider section or structure is used in a general sense, since, as described above, the structure is not actually flat, but it certainly does have a plane for reference purposes in comparison to its extended length and its overall composite dimensional thickness transverse to the flange portion of the structure. In other words, the "plane" of the structure is generally defined by the flange portion of the structure which is embedded in the ground.
There are continuing problems in packaging, handling, storing and displaying such elongated but flexible structures as defined above. The most common form of packaging is to wind each divider section or length into a spiral or coil configuration and contain the section within a cardboard box-like container. This creates a number of problems, including the varied cost of the container itself in comparison to the relatively inexpensive cost of the divider structure. In addition, the dimensions of the spiralled divider sections and their resulting boxed size are not amenable to storage or display in a hardware or garden supply store on conventional shelving. This is particularly true when popular twenty-foot sections are packaged. The resulting boxed product projects considerably outwardly from a conventional display shelf; they often cannot be displayed in "library book" fashion because of limitations on the vertical distances between display shelves; and simply stacking the boxes on shelves results in an exorbitant amount of shelf space required which is not justified for the return on sales of the product.
Consequently, the landscaping bed dividers often are displayed in stores by stacking the boxed product somewhere on the floor which many times is not justified, interferes with traffic patterns and, in some instances, the product ends up being displayed in some area remote from other landscaping or garden supplies which is quite undesirable.
In view of the above problems, demands are being made to package landscaping bed divider sections in their original elongated configurations (i.e., uncoiled). It immediately can be seen that such packaging results in a ten-foot or twenty-foot or other, rather long saleable product. In other words, a plurality of bed divider structures simply are arranged in an elongated stack of juxtaposed sections and held together by retaining means, such as strapping. This method of packaging solves some of the above problems, but magnifies other of the problems and creates still further problems.
More particularly, arranging the divider sections in elongated packages allows the sections to be displayed on standard shelves, such as is done with ordinary copper or galvanized pipes, without projecting outwardly into the aisle. However, it immediately can be seen that ten or twenty linear feet of shelving is required for such a bulky product which does not have the monetary justification as with more expensive compact pipes or other elongated products. This elongated packaging arrangement is amenable to display in "bins", such as is done with lumber in larger material supply stores, but the problem is that such bins usually are located remote from other garden or landscaping products.
It has been attempted to display elongated packages of landscaping bed divider sections "on end" as is done with such elongated products as metal pipes, lightweight wood molding strips and the like. However, it can be noted that such products have their own rigidity and can stand fairly erect. To the contrary, because of the flexible nature of the extruded bed divider sections, long lengths of the divider structures are "limp" in a direction transverse to their flange portions as described above. Consequently, packages of stacked sections are prone to bend and fall over with even the slightest movement away from a vertically supported orientation. This problem could be solved by packaging the entire stack of elongated sections in a cardboard box-like package, but the cost of the packaging material simply would be prohibitive.
Still a further problem with packaging the divider sections in elongated stacked arrays is that, because of their limp nature, such packages are extremely difficult to handle and, in the case of popular twenty-foot lengths, two people are needed to carry the sections without dragging and marring the structures, even though they are light in weight.
It can be seen that a total myriad of problems have been encountered in the total marketing concept of landscaping bed dividers and, today, an actual dilemma exists. This invention is directed to solving these problems by an extremely simple, cost effective packaging system wherein the very nature of the bed divider structure is used to its advantages.